Notes & Dreams

by jkatejohnston

The Saturday before Labor Day: “Not to tomorrow, but the day after that, not that day, but the day…wait…not tomorrow but the day after the day after that—is that the first day of school?”

“Yes.”

Small scream. “I’m dead.”

*

Enzo to Colin: “This is your home. North America.”

*

“There used to be two kinds of paddlefish: Chinese paddlefish and American paddlefish. Then the Chinese paddlefish became the now-extinct Chinese paddlefish because of overfishing. The now-extinct Chinese paddlefish used to be the largest freshwater fish in the world, but then it went extinct and now it’s the sturgeons.”

*

“I can’t meditate and have lotion at the same time.”

*

A dream: “I pulled a fifty pound pike out of the lake by the tail, which is bigger than any pike ever—ghost of a muskellunge—there were all kinds of animals surfacing: rays, sharks, mosasaurs, giant boney catfish.”

*

“I had a good dream. There were emeralds and diamonds at the bottom of a lake infested with gold.”

*

“I had the worst dream ever. There were lions and warthogs, and I tried to get them not to fight each other. I wanted them to fight the zombies. You were brushing my teeth from the backyard. I pulled you in the quarter-open window, and one of the zombies hit the house so hard the bricks started coming in.”

*

“If something is dead and starting to decompose, do you think water makes it decompose more or less?”

“I’d say more.”

“Me too.”

“What made you think of that?”

“Mummies.”

*

“My favorite smell in the whole world is the smell of money being made.”